S1W8: Dips

Everything has caught up with us this week, I mean that both for myself, my group and the cohort.

It’s been exhausting, and collectively we’re only starting to see the physical manifestation of the mental, emotional and psychological exhaustion from a few weeks of intense activities. It’s been a bit of dip in terms of energy for the cohort and it’s been for a few reasons:

• we’ve had quite a few assessments due in a short period of time
• progress and traction hasn’t been as expected for a number of teams and morale has dropped
• we’re all raw from a turbulent few weeks and the culmination of a number of internal and collective conversations around individual and team performance and trust
• we’re all trying to find balance between our life outside of Wade with the world inside of Wade so we can get some perspective on what’s important
• everyone is dealing to varying degrees with their own personal issues some of which they’ve been carrying for some time and are painful to work through

Who said this entrepreneurship gig was easy? Well probably someone who has never done it before.

This weekend I’m really making a big effort to have as little stimulation as I can and I think I’m not the only one. I need to recharge and there are a number of people who have said the same thing for this ANZAC day weekend. Go away, recharge and reset for the final 4 weeks of semester 1.

For me it’s also been a case of catching up as much as I possibly can. I’ve been guilty again of over-committing and last Friday I had to say to my good friend Val that I couldn’t commit to the internship at Relectrify that I had agreed to do this semester. I simply couldn’t as I was already seeing so many of my prior commitments expanding and taking up more of my time and my life balance starting to deform out of control and I needed to take action quickly. It was a tough but respectful conversation. I really admire Val, he’s so perceptive and there’s so much depth to him and we’ll only see amazing things from him and his company in the future.

He laid it on me. He forced me to take ownership of my decisions which I had no trouble doing but it was no doubt disappointing for him. He was optimistic about what I could bring to Relectrify — especially since they’d just got funded — but I had disappointed him, I was reneging on a commitment I made not even a week earlier. I hated doing it, but I knew it was the right thing for me and I think he was able to accept that too.

Again this is another week where I haven’t been able to do what I wanted in terms of exercise, coding, seeing friends and family and my life admin is well and truly piling up too. My iCal calendar for what ever reason doesn’t seem to want to work right now but I can confidently say I’ve done 0 hours of coding, and 1 hour of gym this week and I’ve got a mountain of chores to do which haven’t been done for quite some time. I’ve also been looking at my calendar forecasting the next few weeks and there are so many social and work commitments and assignments due that I’m starting to feel like I’m struggling to find the time anywhere to catchup and balance my life again.

That’s bad. Right now the balance is not healthy and it’s something I need to really prioritise and fix up because I need to ensure I have a good balance of life and work. I committed myself to that this year and I need to keep myself accountable to that. So part of that means I need to prioritise better, work more efficiently and say ‘No’ to more things (something Val rightly pointed out for me to think about) which I really hate doing.

How do you fit all of this in? Have I committed too much? Have I got unrealistic expectations of myself? Maybe. There’s a lot I want for myself this year.

A few days ago I had a look at the ‘vision’ I wrote for myself several months ago for the year ahead. I had been avoiding reading it for a while because I was worried that I was falling off track but I was pleasantly surprised that in fact I wasn’t. Instead I found that I was well on track and had really achieved a lot of what I set out to achieve this year without even knowing it.

A lot of those goals were personal-life oriented and I have to say I’m really happy with my progress there. It’s been a long time coming but I’m satisfied with where I’m at, even if it’s not exactly perfect or as complete as I hope it eventually will be. The important thing right now is that I’ve found what I was looking for and I’m so grateful that I’ve found it. Some of those things are in Wade, some of those things are out of Wade but they speak a lot to the personal growth and acceptance of myself and situations that the right opportunities have found me at the right time and I’ve been able to, and mature enough to take them too.

I’ve found my people here and I’m playing a role in really shaping the people and community around me both in Wade and Ormond itself and in turn it’s helping shape me. There’s a lot of work to it, it’s challenging and I’m being stretched in so many different directions but I feel like I’m adding value:

• helping women entrepreneurs with their two startups and I am honestly honoured to be trusted enough to ‘advocate on their behalf for what’s best for the company’ — they are and will be amazing people going forward
• supporting another person in the cohort by substituting into his assessment on a couple of days notice so he could have the space to take an amazing opportunity at MIT and pitch for a plum role as a creative director to a major national event
• playing some sort of support role for various people as they work through different personal issues as well as working behind the scenes to help pave the road for others to get them what they want more easily

In one aspect that change has been quite spectacularly expressed for me as evidenced in some Myer’s Briggs testing that I did this week along with many of us in the cohort. In the past I’ve consistently been shown to be an ENTJ sometimes with occasional changes across 1 of the dimensions of the test which I happen to be borderline on (e.g. INTJ instead of ENTJ) depending on my mood and circumstance. This time, for the first time ever I’ve flipped one two dimensions. I’m now a ESFJ and what’s most surprising is the ‘F’ which I’ve never been before. (https://www.16personalities.com/esfj-personality)

This week I had a surprise 30th I went to for a mate of mine and through that I caught up with a group of mates I haven’t seen for a while. It was lovely as it always is with them, they truly are a beautiful group of people who are really genuine, supportive and generous. It was really flattering through a number of different conversations to hear them talk about how they believed that ‘I had the balls and the smarts to change the world’ and that they wished they could be doing the same. It was a lovely sentiment and I appreciate the support and I’m comfortable now hearing that and neither being embarassed by it or embracing it too quickly which I think is part of a larger maturation process for myself.

I’ve been there before, I’ve been burned and I no longer feel the mad weight of expectation of trying to live up to that (self-)expectation. I now just want to continue to be me, as I am now, doing what I do and help out where I can. If I’m lucky enough I’m pretty confident that I’ll be rewarded for doing that in time but I’m not hung up on that, all I know is that I’m surrounded by good people, I’m enjoying myself and I’m able to help right now.

I have lots more 30th’s coming up from the same group of friends and I’ve had some of my best friends from another friendship group come back from overseas who I really can’t wait to catch up with more regularly.

Where I will find the time to do this I don’t know. As a group for our Garage Project we have so much to catch up on as we’re effectively starting from scratch with a 6 week handicap compared to other groups because of all the drama we’ve encountered. Not just that but a lot of our assessments across different subjects are back ended in the semester and we have to submit a lot of assessments which we weren’t able to do throughout the last couple of weeks as well. It’s a lot to do. None of the stuff we have to do is easy and it all takes time to do it well and kind of retro-fitting assessments around the development of a business is not necessarily ideal.

This means my team wants me to take more leadership, to really drive direction and focus so we’re making every post a winner which is expectation again I feel comfortable shouldering. The last few weeks I’ve made a deliberate effort of trying to ‘not take up all the oxygen in the room’, be more consultative, and give people more of a chance to step into the limelight, practice their skills and test their abilities. In the past (being an ENTJ) I’ve seen how I can dominate and use all the skills and abilities I have to go in the direction I want to take and that sometimes that leads to hubris. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes again.

I’ve since been told that they want me to lead (being more experienced) and that they will learn an immense amount just from following and that even if there are mistakes it’s ok. So that’s what I shall do, I’ll set the direction and provide the context and guidance even though I don’t have a lot of capacity right now to actually do the grunt work which I feel pretty guilty about.

I may not have 4 kids I’m looking after, or a full-time job, or two startups I’m trying to balance this course and Garage Project with (like others in this course) but I am stretched, and the things I want and are balancing are no less worthy. It is the reality of the situation for me right now given what I wanted from this year and I just have to accept it.

The good news is that it seems like there is a positive sentiment to our Garage Project and it’s just a matter of seeing whether we can convert that sentiment into actual traction.